THE HOLIDAY GIFT
THE RANCHER’S CHRISTMAS SONG
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Epilogue
Prologue
AS USUAL, the annual Christmas party at Carson and Jenna McRaven’s house was crowded, crazy and her absolute favorite night of the year—next to Christmas Eve itself, of course.
Ruby Hartford sat with her three BFFs, Destry Bowman, Gabi Parsons and Ava Webster, in their favorite corner, looking through the big glass windows into the pool inside the McRavens’ supercool house.
They had a big plate of delish snacks in front of them—cookies of every description, a few melt-in-your-mouth brownies and these little swirly appetizer things that looked as if they would be gross but were absolutely fantastic.
Her best friends, Christmas decorations and music all around them, and good stuff to eat. Best. Party. Ever. In all her thirteen years, she’d never been to a better one.
She glanced through the glass and spied the very cute Drew Wheeler standing at the pool’s edge. He seemed to be talking to his little sister Jolie, but his attention was most definitely on her and her friends.
Ruby nudged Destry. “He’s so checking you out. I told you. I think Drew has a thing for you.”
“What happened to that kid?” Gabi said. “Last year he was this quiet kid in glasses who always had his nose in a book. This year he’s suddenly, whoa.”
It was definitely true. In the board shorts he was wearing, Ruby could see the muscles that had suddenly popped out overnight and he must have shot up a foot since the Christmas before. He wasn’t as built as his brother Hayden, but Hayden was sixteen and in high school.
“He is cute, I’ll admit,” Destry said, peeking out the corner of her gaze at him and then quickly turning back to them. “Why would you think he’s looking at me?”
“Just trust me. He is,” Ruby assured her. Even though he was a year ahead of the rest of them in school, Ruby considered herself pretty good friends with Drew since their ranches were close to each other and they rode the bus together.
More than once, Drew had not-quite-casually asked about Destry, but she didn’t want to betray their friendship by admitting that since she knew it would embarrass him.
Gabi, always the skeptic, gave a snort. “He doesn’t even have his glasses on. He’s not looking at anything. He probably doesn’t even know we’re here.”
“Oh, he knows,” Ruby insisted.
“Who is he and what does he know?”
At the curious adult voice, she turned around and saw her mom and dad had wandered over. They were holding hands, as usual, which always made her heart happy.
“Oh, nothing. I think Drew likes Destry, that’s all.”
“Ruby!” Destry exclaimed, her face turning almost the same red as the ornaments on the tree next to them.
“I just think you guys would be cute together. What’s the harm in a little matchmaking? Tell them what a good track record I have at it!”
Her dad made a face but her mom only smiled softly. Ruby never called Ashley her stepmother. Even though her parents hadn’t married until she was six, Ashley was the only mom she had ever known.
“Who else have you brought together?” Ava asked curiously.
Ruby grinned and pointed at her parents. Yeah. She rocked at matchmaking.
“Really?” Destry asked, eyes wide. “I always wondered how a Hollywood movie star met and married the best kindergarten teacher in Pine Gulch.”
“It’s a great story,” Ruby assured her.
“I bet it’s so romantic,” Ava said, her voice barely a whisper. It weirded Ruby out, but Ava—who used to be so normal—could barely talk around Justin Hartford after watching several of his movies with her cousins when she went back to Chicago for a week over the summer.
“Oh, yeah.” Her father grinned. “Romantic. I was a regular knight in shining armor.”
“You were. Eventually.” Her mom gave him the kind of secretive, goofy look they were always exchanging. “Of course, it took a while for me to see you that way after you thought I was some kind of celebrity stalker and threatened to have me arrested.”
“Oh, you have to tell us the whole story now!” Destry exclaimed.
“Well, if you insist.” Her mom handed Ruby’s little brother Jess over to Ruby’s dad and settled onto the sofa next to Des. “You see, it all started with a rascal of a kindergartener who wouldn’t do her schoolwork....”
One
JUSTIN HARTFORD WAS a jerk.
Ashley Barnes leaned against the hood of her car glaring at the locked gates to the sprawling Blue Sage ranch and repeated the words like a mantra. Jerk. Jerk. Jerk.
He was a narcissistic egomaniac who thought the entire world had nothing better to do but impinge on his personal space. Of course he would have locked gates. He wasn’t about to give mere mortals easy access to him.
Too darn bad. She had to talk to him today. If repeated phone calls, letters and emails weren’t going to do the trick, she would just have to bust down these gates until the man agreed to talk to her.
She sighed. Well, okay, that probably wasn’t the most brilliant idea she had ever come up with. As much as she adored her lime-green VW bug, she was afraid it didn’t have the necessary gumption to break through a couple of eight-foot-high iron gates.
Failure was not an option, though. She and the jerk in question had been heading for this shoot-out for three weeks. Whether he knew it or not—or whether he even cared—she had given Justin Hartford an ultimatum in her mind. His time for avoiding her had just run out.
She eyed the gates, all eight menacing feet of them. She hadn’t grown up on a horse ranch with four older brothers without learning a thing or two about hurdling fences, shinnying up trees and swinging out of barn lofts on old, fraying ropes. Climbing the man’s gate wouldn’t exactly be easy, but he wasn’t giving her a lot to work with here.
She sighed, grateful at least that she was wearing jeans. She had to jump three times before she could reach
